by Davis Bunn
When Matt remained silent, Connie asked, “What do you mean?”
“You saw the outside, right? The blast carved a fifteen-foot hole. I mean, the side door was gone. But beyond that one room, the house was immaculate. We found this one crystal vase standing on the kitchen counter, like it was waiting for flowers. The bomb crew said they’d heard about this sort of thing but never seen one before. I forget what they called it.”
“Signature,” Matt said slowly. “This is probably going to sound insane. So I’m apologizing in advance.”
Brodski shot Connie a look. “Hey, I’m a Baltimore cop. I live insane.”
“Memories from right before the blast are still fuzzy.” Matt talked to the empty notebook opened on the table before him. “But I’ve got this image in my head that won’t go away. I might have seen a guy come from behind me. In my head he takes aim at me with a gun. But he’s there and gone so fast . . .”
Connie felt enough of his tension to grind down her response. “Let’s just stop with the hesitation, okay?”
Matt gave her an unfocused look, like he was trying to recall who she was.
“Just start at the beginning and walk us through it.”
“Right.” Matt went back to examining the table’s scratched metal surface. The scar on his temple glistened an angry red. “I parked the car in the rear alley. Mom headed for the side door while I took groceries out of the trunk. She was maybe fifty feet ahead of me. More. Then the guy appeared. I think.”
“Where from?”
“The house across the street has a hedge. He just appeared and disappeared. His arms were out together like a pro taking aim. Then he vanished.”
“What did you do?”
Matt was sweating now. “My gun was in the trunk with my clothes. I couldn’t decide whether I’d actually seen anything; it was all out of the side of my vision. I told my mother to go inside. Then I leaned over to set down the bags. Then the world exploded.”
Brodski spoke then. “Bending down saved your life.”
“Yeah.” Matt took no pleasure from the fact. “The doctors said the same thing.”
“Okay. Here’s what I want you to do.” Connie shut the file and slid it toward the center of the table. “Close your eyes. Go back to the moment that guy stepped out.”
“Might have stepped out.”
“I’ve already told you. Forget the maybe. Right now, he was there. Okay. Are you there too?”
“Yes.”
Connie came in tight. “Bring him around in front of you. You’re a pro. Tell me what you see.”
Brodski was watching her. Not him. Studying her hard. Until Matt said, “He was tall.”
“Taller than you?”
“About the same height.”
“Okay. Call it six feet plus. Was he Anglo, African-American, what?”
“White.” More definite now.
Connie couldn’t help it. Real detective work. At last. She sighed with a pleasure as real as fear.
Brodski was into it now as well. “Anything about what he was wearing?”
A silence, then, “A sports jacket. Not like a suit. A team jacket. Different-colored sleeves from the body. And a cap.”
Brodski leaned back. Studied the ceiling lights for a long time. Long enough for Connie to ask, “What?”
Brodski said to the ceiling, “Yankees.”
Matt opened his eyes. Just stared at him.
Connie said, “I don’t remember that.”
“Sure. I saw the guy. Anglo. Bulked up like he was seriously into weights or something. And older, right?”
Matt’s wounded expression had only deepened. “I don’t remember.”
Brodski dropped his chin. “Sure. A Yankees cap and jacket. Standing back from the perimeter tape. He was there.”
Connie asked, “Why didn’t you note it in the report?”
“What was to report? He was one of the first guys to show up; that’s why I remember him. By the time you got there and the ambo took Kelly here away, we had, what, a couple of dozen people out there making noise.”
“More,” Connie said, watching Matt and worrying over what she saw in his face. Wishing she understood why finding out he’d been right could hurt him so bad.
“Yeah, but him I remember. Standing off by himself. Just standing and watching until the ambo arrived. Sure.”
“Think you remember enough to give us a composite?”
“No problem.” Brodski rose from the table. “We all done here?”
“I guess so. Matt?”
“Yes.” He stood and offered his hand. “Thank you.”
“Hey, I’m real sorry about your loss.” To Connie, only half joking, “You’re sure you’re not IA?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Connie grinned. “But be a pal and don’t tell Hands, okay?”
“He’d freak if he thought this meeting was about him.”
Connie gathered up the files and steered Matt toward the door. “That’s right. He would.”
Matt followed Connie down the tunnel and back into headquarters. He knew she was waiting for him to speak. Her sense of worry emanated as strong as musk. But he was unable to respond. Reliving the scene had left him nauseous. But that was not the only reason Matt remained silent. If the man had existed, then his other half-remembered image took a giant step closer to reality. The memory of the blast lifting him off the ground was mixed now with the nightmare he had endured every night since almost dying. This second image was crystal clear. For a blinding explosion of time, he had been outside himself. He had watched himself lying upon the pavement. He had seen his mother’s crumpled form. But he could not go to her. She had looked disheveled, which for his mother was unthinkable. Her skirt was up around her thighs. Her hair was flung over her face. The earring was missing from the ear he could see. Matt knew she was dead. Then the image ended, leaving only the smoky burn of guilt over not having kept her safe. One brief flash of viewing himself outside himself. The next thing he knew, he was in the ambulance with two medics working on him and looking very worried.
Matt tried hard to keep from recalling the image or dream or whatever it was. But it flashed into his vision at the most appalling of times.
Like now. Standing beside Connie, waiting for the elevator, feeling the sweat dribble down his spine.
They stepped into the elevator and the doors closed. Moving blankets covered three walls, a roomy coffin for two. Connie gave him the same pinched look she had shown D’Amico upstairs. “You okay, Matt?”
“Am I Matt now?”
“Whatever.” Her worry was genuinely touching. “We’re still pals, right?”
He pretended to scratch his forehead, removing the damp. “Absolutely.”
“You sure?”
“We will be,” Matt replied. Her concern was enough to banish the unsolved mystery. For now. “If you let me take you to dinner.”
She raised her head, said to the ceiling, “Did I ever walk into that one.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Come by my seats at the game Sunday,” she said. “We’ll negotiate.”
“Oh. Is that what it’s called these days?”
Which was why, when the doors opened and they found D’Amico waiting for them, they were both smiling. Connie covered it with, “Success.”
“Give it to me.”
D’Amico studied them both as Connie described what they had learned from Brodski. “So we got us a clue. Way to go, team. Morales, talk to the sergeant, arrange the sketch artist while Brodski’s still in recall mode. Then get on the prisoners.”
“Roger that.”
“Look for anything that might get a guy who’s a pro at staying silent to talk.” To Matt, “It’s time we met your bomb guy.”
As the elevator doors shut on them, Connie cut Matt a look and said, “Go birds.”
D’Amico asked, “Am I missing something?”
“Football.”
“Never caught that bug.” He handed Matt a fi
le. “Two copies of your mother’s case, one for you, one for the fibbie. This has been highly sanitized. If your tame fed complains, tough. I got to tell you, I’m reluctant to give him this much.”
Matt felt the paper vibrate in his grip, an angry buzzing that shook him to his bones.
The elevator opened on the ground floor and D’Amico started for the front doors. “Ask a thousand cops and you’ll get one answer. A fed comes at you with a mouthful of howdy and a handful of gimme.”
“I’m a fed,” Matt said.
“Which is the only reason I’m trusting you with those files. The operative word here is you. Personal. Not this joker. Now tell me what you know about him.”
“Almost nothing. Allen Pecard is a Brit. He’s served as outside consultant to the fibbies. Bannister says he’s worked several cases with him and rates him very highly.” Matt recalled the initial contact. “He strikes me as a pro.”
D’Amico punched through the front doors and headed for Pratt Street. “I’ll go this one round, then he’s all yours.”
Pecard was waiting for them outside the ENT. He had traded his work-stained dungarees for a jacket of herringbone twill and black gabardine slacks. Gray-and-white pinstriped shirt. Muted silk tie. Gold collar pin. Black lace-ups so well shined they reflected the afternoon sun. Pecard was a polished English gentleman with the features of a feral beast and the neck scar to match. His clear gaze gave nothing and took in all.
Matt watched as the two men, a homicide cop and a semiretired federal bomb expert, shook hands. They eyed each other like enemy warriors brought to the peace table. D’Amico said, “Evidence is on the second floor.”
“Lead on, Detective.”
They rode upstairs in silence. The evidence lockup shared the windowless floor with temporary holding cells. The lockup clerks had the pasty look of voluntary prisoners. D’Amico signed them in, pointed to a counter surrounded by stools, and said, “Wait here.”
Matt watched him follow the clerk into a second room, this one framed by reinforced lockers. The clerk used keys chained to her waist to open one at the end. D’Amico pulled out a cardboard box and carried it over. He set it on the counter and said, “All yours.”
Pecard glanced at the hovering clerk. “Do you mind?”
“The clerk stays,” D’Amico replied. “Standard ops whenever an outsider views evidence in a live file.”
Pecard shrugged his indifference and slipped a pouch from his jacket pocket. From the pouch came a starched white towel, tweezers, high-powered pencil light, magnifying glass, surgical gloves, and a jeweler’s loupe. He slipped on the tight-fitting gloves, opened the box, and disappeared.
Matt forced himself to watch as Pecard sorted through the blackened and twisted elements of a sick puzzle. D’Amico apparently noticed his queasiness. Very little escaped the detective’s attention. He kept shooting Matt glances, but did not speak.
Pecard’s taut features suggested an elemental nature, one that did not permit the luxury of spare flesh or wasted motion. His hands were big-boned and his fingers splayed, the kind of grip that could one-hand a basketball. Yet he handled the charred remains with an artist’s delicacy.
Finally he set down the tweezers and dropped the loupe into his palm and declared, “Mr. Kelly was correct. The target was the woman.”
“Oh, really.”
“There’s no timer, you see.”
“We noticed that.”
“And no trigger for a wire.”
“It could have been vaporized,” D’Amico replied. “We’re talking about a very powerful bomb, remember?”
Pecard picked up a blackened filament. “This is what’s left of your ignition source, Detective.”
D’Amico leaned in closer. “Looks like a wire to me.”
“It’s meant to.” The frazzled strand was connected to a base smaller than Matt’s thumbnail. “But do you see this flat piece here?”
“Where the trip wire was connected to the wall.” But D’Amico sounded less certain now.
“We perform a remarkable duty at the Aberdeen testing grounds, Detective. Every time your authorities get wind of a new explosive device, homegrown or high-tech, charge or delivery method, our task is the same.” Pecard twisted the charcoal wire and strand back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. “We work up a dozen or so copies, using all the elements we know they used, whoever ‘they’ are. Then we blow it up. Over and over and over. Then we inspect the results.”
Pecard held the wire before D’Amico’s face. “This is an antenna. The base here is a connection point to the receiver. Your ignition source was the most widely owned digital receiver on earth.”
Matt said, “A cell phone.”
“Very good.”
The memory slapped him across the face. “Just as she reached the door—”
“She being your mother?”
“Yes. Her phone rang.” Matt stared at the wire dangling from Pecard’s fingers. “But it wasn’t her phone, was it.”
D’Amico said, “We’ll need to verify this.”
“You do that, Detective.” Pecard’s gaze remained on Matt. “What would you say is the next step in this investigation, Agent Kelly?”
It was the first time in Matt’s life anyone had ever called him that. The jolt was strong enough to pull him back into the room. “Find out who started the rumor about right-wingers going after my father. And why.”
Pecard might have smiled. “I believe my work here is concluded.”
But D’Amico remained between Pecard and the door. “Help us out here. Explain to me why you’re doing this.”
“Your question says quite a lot about the current state of things, when one officer of the law must ask another why he’s willing to assist with an unsolved murder.”
D’Amico crossed his arms and waited.
“Bryan Bannister and I go back a very long way. You know who he is?”
“SAC of the Homeland regional office.”
“Bryan asked me to check out the site. He knows enough about explosives to worry that his predecessor might have made a seriously false claim about the armory heist.”
“So Bannister expected us to discover this sooner or later,” D’Amico interpreted. “Now he’s hoping if you help us out, we might toss him a bone and keep it quiet. How am I doing?”
Pecard gave a shrug that could have meant anything.
“Kelly showing up when he did must have been like the answer to a prayer.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Pecard said. “If it hadn’t been Agent Kelly, another avenue would have been located. Sooner or later.”
D’Amico stepped aside. “You can go now.”
Pecard said to Matt, “You have the file for me?” He accepted the folder, said, “Stay in touch, Agent Kelly.”
By the time Matt returned to his basement apartment, his leg felt like a receptacle for all the day’s stress. He took his time stretching, then showered, and then stretched again. Then he made his calls. He had no concern that the two people he needed to reach might already have quit work for the weekend.
Sol Greene, for one, never stopped this close to election day. Sol had two phones and a pager. The phone listed on his business card always responded with a message. The other phone was guaranteed to draw him from the grave.
When Sol answered, Matt heard a band and some big booming voice, not his father’s. Then, “What?”
“It’s Matt.”
“You got to speak up, kid. We still on for tomorrow?”
The message had been waiting for him as soon as he keyed on the phone. “Nine-thirty, WTBF.”
“Be there a few minutes early; they’ll want to do your makeup. This is big, Matt. You and your dad are going national.”
“Sol, I need an introduction.”
“What? Sorry, the noise is unbelievable.”
“I want to speak with Rolf Zelbert.” Zelbert was the dental surgeon from Annapolis. His father’s adversary for the Senate.
; “Does this have something to do with the police thing?”
“The investigation. Yes. I just need to ask him a couple of questions—”
“Matt, we’re nine days away from winning!”
“And I’m investigating my mother’s murder.”
“There’s no way Zelbert is going to tell you a thing about those fanatics. It’s not in his best interest!”
“I don’t think right-wing extremists were behind this, Sol. And I know they weren’t after Dad.”
“What?”
“We just got confirmation. Mom was the target all along.”
“I can’t . . .” Sol was drowned out by a thunderous round of applause.
When the noise dropped, Matt said, “I’ve seen the evidence. Mom was targeted and we’ve got to learn why.”
“Matt, can’t this wait just nine days?”
Matt held the phone, weighing responses. “She was your friend, Sol.”
“I’m just asking for a little time. Nine days. It’s already been what, two weeks?”
Another booming voice proclaimed Paul Kelly for United States Senate, then Sol shouted against the crowd’s roar, “Your father’s coming on, Matt. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Jack van Sant answered with, “Agent Kelly, excellent. You’re on my list. This call’s saved me a dime.”
“Something the matter?”
“Negative. The ambassador wanted to confirm the reports were true. You brought down an armed assailant bare-handed and saved a cop’s life?”
“Actually, sir, I was unofficial backup. Another officer—”
“Remember the ambassador’s number one rule, Kelly. Wear your medals.”
“Then I guess it’s all true, sir.”
“Good work. Nothing pleases the ambassador more than being proven right. For my side, I’m glad to be handing off to another specialist born to ops.”
“I need a favor.” Matt ran through what they had learned thus far. “We’re no closer to identifying a suspect.”
“Thirty-six hours into a cold case, I’d say you’re rolling.”
